You
can find the full script for Podcast 29 at
http://www.pataphysics.net.au/mysf_project/mysf_scripts/index.html
Sitting in a sort of amphitheatre plan facing generally towards an Promethean Interactive WhiteBoard (IWB), twenty-four students in English, Year 8 are accommodated in a dense brick classroom with yellowish stucco behind posters and notice boards. The classroom looks down from the second floor over some tall trees outside the front of the school and through these to a large oval with bordering gum trees.
In summer the overhead fan rotates with a slight squeak and the tattered venetian blinds must be used to blockout the intense sun so that the IWB can be used for interactives, presentations and DVD presentations.
This is a mixed ability English class of males and females of many cultures but the socioeconomics of the area mean many students are fine readers and writers while less than a handful are struggling. Year 8 in Australia relates to students of about thirteen years of age.
The class has a teacher desk with a computer attached to the internet and the school LAN, as well as a DVD player. Stereo speakers are attached high to the IWB wall. Students seem to enjoy and are well acquainted with presenting their own materials using PowerPoint or some other application through the IWB. They are also used to brainstorming using Inspiration software, presenting from the internet or their thumb-drives and accessing a secure Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) to pick up notes, assessment tasks and links for research.
Also assumed for this task was a classroom set of Active Expression Learner Response Systems or 'clickers' or remote voting handhelds to accompany the IWB so that students could interact with the focus class by voting responses to questions.
This facet of the focus class is not documented in this website but the main questions during the video segments in the class relate to the use of the clickers for student feedback, with further refining of the focus class based on the responses.
The
notes from the VLE were introduced as a Word document through the IWB with just
a few paragraphs added each class. This meant that the one hour lesson usually
contained about a third of notes and discussions, while the other two thirds
were used for tidying up missed assessment, visual snippets (see below),
looking at the novel Taronga (Kelleher, 1986) itself and time for
writing and sharing ideas for their own creative response.
As noted, above, writing about the sub-genre and reading from the novel with discussions was a major part of the book study but to make the concentration on the varying forms of Post-Apocalyptic texts more exciting, a number of small segments from DVDs were also used.
In the students' academic guidelines DVD narratives with a rating over M in the Australian system of classification could not be shown without express and signed permission from the students' parents. However, portions of M rated videos could be shown, to illustrate certain points.
The visual texts to be used in the focus class were not included in the snippets but instead several DVD beginnings or other portions were used. These were judged to be suitable to the age range for the particular study, even though some were classified at M rating.
Films used in this section include:
Assessment task for the 'Taronga' study
There was a major assessment task related to the study of Taronga (Kelleher, 1986), as noted above. This was the major task for the term and constituted 20% of the semester total.
The task was discussed and negotiated with the class and relates to the unit outlines for the class as well as the term planner. The task was posted to the school VLE that also tracked submission of the task, which could be submitted online through the VLE.
The focus class took place one week after the major task was due, in Week 16, with participation in the focus class counting towards general participation in the class.
The major task follows:
Semester 2, 2009
English,
Major Essay, worth 20%, due Wk 15
Background to the task:
This task relates to
the study of the novel Taronga by Victor Kelleher.
Students are asked
to respond in the form of a short story according to the guidelines, as
noted below, as part of the Year 8 attention given to formal writing for a
variety of audiences and purposes, compliant with curriculum documents for
this cohort.
Details
of the task:
Students are to
write a short story in response to Victor Kelleher's novel Taronga.
The class has looked at Post-Apocalyptic texts within the Fantasy and
Science Fiction genres and has studied ideas found in many of these texts,
including Taronga. A Text and Image property is found on the class
portal with links to articles, essays and definitions to support them in
their thinking about this creative response task.
Students are asked
to write a short story set in a Post-Apocalyptic Australia of the near or
far future. They are also asked to write a formal Rationale linking their
short story to the text Taronga, including a Resource List of their
readings for this assignment.
This is a
formal assignment in two parts: the short story and the Rationale with the
Resource List. Both documents should follow the guidelines as seen, below.
Details
of the Creative Response and Rationale task:
Students are to
submit a polished and final draft of a short story set in a near or far
future Australia, after an Apocalyptic disaster or situation as discussed
through various texts including Victor Kelleher's Taronga
The short story does
not have a definite word length but a rough guide of a minimum length might
be two and half pages
The short story
should have a small number of characters, or even just one character, in a
Post-Apocalyptic situation
The short story
should explore some of the themes of this sub-genre of SF as discussed in
class and through notes on the class portal
The short story
should include dialogue, even if it is internal dialogue, and it should be
free of errors in expression and formatting
The short story must
be accompanied by a Rationale: a document that describes in formal English
the relationship between the student's short story and the study of
Post-Apocalyptic fiction through Taronga
The Rationale should
be at least half a page in length and should be written formally in
paragraphs, including citations for all texts used for the short story, such
as the novel
The Rationale should
make direct comparisons between the creative short story and the texts
studied, with their themes
A Resource List of
texts used should follow the Rationale for the short story
It is strongly
advised that students should bring earlier drafts of both their short
stories and their Rationales to the teacher prior to the final deadline at
the end of Week 15.
Assessment of the task:
Assessment of the
task uses the Eisner Connoisseurship Model based on the following
guidelines:
Abides by the
guidlines for the task and submitted either through the myclasses portal or
by hand by the due date - 20%
A clear, logical
argument is presented in the Rationale explaining the student response to
the chosen texts and their themes - 40%
The text/s is/are
used to support claims made for each point in the Rationale - 20%
The short story and
Rationale is in a polished, final draft form, free of spelling errors and
other errors of expression - 20%
Good luck!
The focus class related to the study of Post-Apocalyptic texts and Taronga (Kelleher, 1986). For this focus class practices and pedagogies of the Quality Teaching Framework (NSWDET, 2006 & NSWDET, 2006a) were used but according to this model several levels of pedagogies were encouraged.
The personal pedagogy used for the design of this section of study relates most closely to the writings of Carl Bereiter for the
Computer-Supported Intentional Learning Environments (CSILE) and his wonderful work Education and Mind in the Knowledge Age (Bereiter, 2002).
The use of the modified Constructivist framework derives firstly from Jonassen (2000) and for concept mapping from Jonassen and Marra (1998).
The Quality Teaching Framework (QTF) (NSWDET, 2006 & NSWDET, 2006a) is not incompatible with these personal pedagogies though it must be noted that the QTF is not linked overtly to a blended learning (Felicia, nd) environment and has weaknesses in its approach to knowledge and understanding, as seen in the focus class materials.
Bereiter, C. (2002). Education and Mind in the Knowledge Age, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ.
Bereiter, C. (2003). 'Bring classrooms into the knowledge age'. Lecture presented at the Conference on Reform Initiatives in Teaching and Learning, University of Macau, 28 November 2003. Retrieved 30 June, 2005 from http://ikit.org/fulltext/2003_bringing.htm.
Bereiter, C. & Scardamalia, M. (Unpublished). 'Technology and Literacies: from Print Literacy to Dialogic Literacy'. Draft of a Chapter to appear in Literacies and Learning, Editor: Alister Cumming. Retrieved 16 August, 2006, from http://ikit.org/fulltext/TechandLit.htm.
Felicia, D. (n.d.). 'Blended Learning: Choosing the Right Blend'. Encyclopaedia of Educational Technology. Retrieved 27 February, 2005 from http://coe.sdsu.edu/eet/Articles/blendlearning/start.htm
Jonassen, D. (2000). 'Semantic Networks (Concept Maps) as Mindtools'. Chapter Four. Computers as Mindtools for Schools: Engaging Critical Thinking. Second Edition. Merrill: Ohio.
Jonassen D.H. and Marra R.M., (1998). 'Concept Mapping and Other Formalisms as Mindtools for Representing Knowledge', URL http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/~gramm/class/altdocs/dav_alt.htm. Retrieved 5 August, 2004 from https://www.usqonline.com.au/courseware/usq/2004S2/FET5601/courseware/usq/2004S1/FET5601/unit_resources/objects/Copyright%20Resource/2/default.pdf
Kelleher, V. (1986). Taronga. Scoresby, Victoria: Penguin Group Australia. Paperback 9780140326314
Marsden, J. (1993) Tomorrow, When the War Began. Sydney, Australian: Pan Macmillan.
Matheson, R. (1954). I am Legend. New York: Walker and Company.
NSWDET (2006). A classroom practice guide: Quality teaching in ACT Schools. Copyright NSW Department of Education and Training. Canberra: Publishing Services for the ACT Department of Education and Training.
NSWDET (2006a). An assessment practice guide: Quality teaching in ACT Schools. Copyright NSW Department of Education and Training. Canberra: Publishing Services for the ACT Department of Education and Training.
Tolkein, JRR (1937). The Hobbit. London: Allen and Unwin.
ends
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